The Clock Struck One

The Mirrored Room

Silence filled the old mansion, broken only by the ticking of an ancient clock. No one had wound it in years, yet it chimed once, as if waking from a long sleep.

Rowena crept through the house with bare feet and a shawl wrapped around her shoulders. It was a winter's night and, with no fires lit, her breath formed pale clouds in the cold air.

She climbed the creaking stairs. In her hand she held a key she had found hidden in the hem of her dead mother's dress, like a secret waiting to be discovered.

A grandfather clock stood on the landing with its hands fixed at one o’clock, although the time was 2.27 in the morning. As she stepped closer, the clock gave a single, hollow chime, impossibly, stubbornly marking the wrong hour. Next to it there was an oak-panelled door, the one the key would unlock.

Her hands trembled as she turned the key.

Entering the small, windowless room, her gaze swept slowly across the walls covered entirely in mirrors. None reflected her image. Instead, they flickered with scenes from her childhood, her mother’s smile fading into grief, her father’s games ending with his funeral, and the day she ran away.

Each mirror held a memory she had never spoken aloud, yet the images screamed inside her mind.

In the centre of the room stood a chair, and someone sat in it. As she stepped closer, she saw a girl, not herself but almost the same. The same eyes. The same scarred wrist. The same necklace she had lost long ago.

As the air changed, she stopped at once. A coldness crept over her skin, and she wondered if she was looking at a ghost or something worse.

The girl’s face was solemn and filled with sorrow. She whispered, 'Sixteen years of stillness. You left me for the silence.'

Rowena gasped and stepped back as the door slammed behind her.

The clock struck one again.

2.28